Her car owner Tony Stewart points to the struggles of the whole Stewart-Haas Racing organization — neither Stewart nor Ryan Newman have had strong starts — as a sign that the change to the new Sprint Cup car has thrown them all for a bit of a loop.

Newman is 23rd in the standings, Stewart 24th and Patrick 28th.

“The fact that Ryan and I have both struggled, too, shows that as an organization we have got a little catching up to do right now,” Stewart said Wednesday during an appearance at Martinsville Speedway.

“She’s still doing a good job. Her feedback is still good. But we’ve all struggled at some point during the races, so a lot of that is we have to get caught up as an organization.”

Stewart said she has handled her struggles with poise.

“The great thing is she analyzes everything that happens and she’s pretty smart about realizing that it’s going to be a long year, it’s going to be a learning year,” Stewart said.

“Last year was just scratching the surface. … To be in that Cup car every week will pay dividends the second half of the season.”

The year started well for Patrick as the former IndyCar star became the first woman to win the pole for a Cup race — the Daytona 500 — and then had the highest finish ever for a female driver at Daytona as she placed eighth.

She had hoped to ride that momentum into the weekly grind of 2013. Last year, she was running on the lead lap at Phoenix, battling for 12th before a last-lap crash with Jeff Burton, and at Bristol she was on the lead lap until Regan Smith accidentally wrecked her.

This year she was running in the mid-20s at Phoenix when she had a tire problem and crashed. The next week, in her first Cup race at Las Vegas (where she finished fourth in the Nationwide Series race in 2011), she finished six laps down in 33rd and then five laps down in 28th at Bristol.

Patrick had hoped that the new Sprint Cup car would help her catch up to some of the competition. Instead, it has turned into a negative because none of the organization’s setups from the past will work with the new car.

Stewart said the new aero package with the new bodies and the new mechanical-balance rules as far as rear suspension have made much of what worked in the past not applicable this year.

“She’s coming in a pretty hard year where everybody has to adjust,” Stewart said. “That kind of takes away the advantage of Ryan and I as teammates, a little bit of having setups that we’re used to that we know work and being able to put her in those right away.

“We’re all three trying to find combinations that are working right now.”

Even the Daytona 500 finish was a little bit of a letdown for Patrick, who was running third on the final lap.

Stewart said he and Patrick talked about the finish and the move that she was thinking about trying could have dropped her to 15th.

“There were more opportunities for her to make mistakes than to do the right thing, and she did a phenomenal job,” Stewart said.

“There wasn’t one thing she did wrong during that race. … She really did a great job.”

Stewart said the spotlight on Patrick also makes it tough, especially at Daytona, where her relationship with driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was a topic of conversation.

“That was a hard 10 days for her to be down there because of all the drama with a new boyfriend and her divorce and everything else, which doesn’t do anything to make the racecar go faster but seemed to be the stuff that everybody wanted to talk about,” Stewart said.

“That was a lot of stuff for her to go through and I thought she did really well.”

Stewart said Patrick ultimately will be judged by her results.

“Her results are going to speak for itself,” Stewart said. “If she has good results, just like any other driver, she’ll progress. If she doesn’t have good results, she’ll suffer the fate other drivers will have.

“She has shown in a short amount of time that she does have talent. This is a difficult year … to come in here with a new racecar and trying to get the feel of it, plus running at this level. She’s got a difficult year ahead.”